Quick Germany / France trip
 

Hi, posted this originally as a "Quick France trip" but situation has changed so need some Germany insight as well.

Husband has business travel in Strasbourg; we are going together for a total of 5 days (4 nights) and then he is staying and I am returning to the US.

Strasbourg / Colmar look wonderful. We were planning to stay in that area, however, would like to use our Marriott points if possible and the nearest is Baden-Baden. So we started poking around wondering about using B-B as our (free)base? We would rent a car if we do this and do some day trips - Heidelberg, Strasbourg, Black Forest. Has anyone spent much time in this area, and is this a reasonable base ? Should we add in a night in Strasbourg (I'm leaning towards no, just get up early and spend a nice long day exploring but would we miss too much)?

Also - looked at the train table for my return to FRA; am I crazy or is there a train at 1:08 in the morning?? Surely I am reading this wrong? I would actually take the 6:40, which gets into FRA at 8:06 and my flight to DFW leaves at 11:10AM.

Baden-Baden is a wonderful town - very relaxing spa town with famous casino where the rich and famous once gathered in Victorian times to wager - be sure to tour it in mornings before it opens to public. I'd take trains to Strasbourg and Heidelberg where cars are problematic. Yes one long day there could be fine. www.bahn.de/en German Railways site is infallible so check that for 1:08 train which makes total sense. Yes Baden-Baden good base though for Black Forest by car I'd want to stay in some neat small town up there.

Four nights equal three full days not five. Your fifth day is a very early departure and your arrival day will most likely also miss some part, too. Why exactly you think you have to blow up a visit to Alsace plus Freiburg with everything from the Black Forest, Baden-Baden and even Heidelberg is a total mystery to me. Also being that far from the airport for such an early flight looks pretty risky to me.

You onlyhave three full days; that's not enough time for all that rushing around. Basing yourself in Baden-Baden is fine - it's a nice place - but something's got to give in your proposed itinerary. And I concur that you should go back to Frankfurt the night before. Having taken many, many trains in Europe, I have learned never, ever, ever to be more than a taxi ride away from my departure airport.

Yes spend last day in Frankfurt - a nice city with famous museums and great shopping area to stock up for gifts to take home.

While free is nice, you have such a very short time, I would not waste any of it by staying someplace that required more time traveling to other places. You get more time for sightseeing and experiencing things by staying in a place where you wish to spend the most time, or the place that has the most to see.

Also, trains in Germany are known for being extremely reliable, but it would still be best to stay the last night at a hotel that runs a shuttle near the Frankfurt airport.

Question. Will your husband be working those first four days? Is that why you are going to Strasbourg? If he is free then, not working, then you could actually go anyplace, not limited to Strasbourg and nearby area?

Are you flying RT Frankfurt? Will your husband be with you that last night?
Perhaps you could visit Heidelberg in the afternoon, on your way back to Frankfurt, or visit anywhere you like and head very late to the airport hotel.

Baden-Baden is nice but after staying there for a few nights I'd rather be in a proper larger city like Heidelberg or Mainz or Weisbaden - the latter two close to Frankfurt Airport by train. But agree best to stay near the airport.

Your other post indicates late October. Correct?

It's not clear how what period of time you will spend in Strasbourg.

I would NOT fuss over Marriott points. Use them for something else sometime.

"We are active and enjoy lots of walking (hiking if possible), exploring the local culture, love any type of historical tours (especially intrigued by Lyon's WWII resistance activities), castle tours, etc ."

Then spend 2 nights (if you have that many) in the Middle Rhine Valley. It's not far from FRA.

Area map showing FRA airport location: Attachment 1365

Hiking: Rhine Castle Trail, awesome scenery: https://www.romantic-germany.info/index.php?id=2942
Castle history tour: Marksburg Castle - a true medieval castle. Check w/ castle about tours in English or pick up a written pamphlet and take a German tour.
https://www.marksburg.de/en/circuit/
Local culture: Open-air museum in Bad Sobernheim (not far from Bingen.) https://www.freilichtmuseum-rlp.de/b...h-information/
Old-world towns nearby: Bacharach, Oberwesel.

The Middle Rhine Valley is a Unesco World Heritage site. http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1066

I would stay in Bingen if using the trains. Rüdesheim is a livelier town than Bingen - pay it a visit using the ferry if you stay in Bingen. These towns are right across from each other and are served by both passenger and car ferries. Either town works. Bingen can be reached by train from Strasbourg in 3 hours and it has direct trains to FRA airport station that take less than 1 hour. It takes 1.3 hours from Rüdesheim and there's a connection to make. If you want a waterfront hotel, it's hard to beat the NH Bingen Hotel location.
https://media-cdn.holidaycheck.com/w...7-6a0c2650c5d2

You can take a Rhine cruise from either town as late as Nov. 4 (with the Bingen-Rüdesheimer cruise company) Boats leave Bingen at 9:30, 11:15 and 14:30 for St. Goar (on the Bingen side) and St. Goarshausen. Boats leave Rüdesheim 15 minutes earlier. Return by train to your base town. If that's Bingen, your train leaves St. Goar and stops in Oberwesel and Bacharach on the way. Convenient.

Train from Bingen to FRA normally leaves 7:13 and arrives 8:06 at FRA airport. Convenient. There are earlier trains as well. And nice too that you don't have to spend a final night at a airport hotel.

Thank you all so, so much for all of your input. We have decided to base in Baden-Baden for 3 nights and Strasbourg for 1 night. Visit Heidelberg on the way to Baden-Baden (I have confirmed that there are full-sized luggage lockers at the main Heidelberg train station). The reason for the 1 night in Strasbourg: there is a work event that night with colleagues and their families.

The logic being - this is not the planned out vacation of our dreams - this is a lucky pop-up opportunity due to my husband's unexpected work trip. So free is very important in that respect as we already have vacations planned for early next year and next summer for which we have set aside travel budget and vacation days. Maybe we can't do everything there is to do in that area, but that's not the idea anyway. We are happy to get this opportunity to go somewhere we haven't been before .

Honestly the more we researched Baden-Baden, the more appealing it is. It really does appear to have quite a bit of hiking even within the town itself and appears to be easy to get around via bus. It is certainly better than the alternative (normal weekend in Dallas), haha .

Our general itinerary is something like this :

Friday AM: arrive Frankfurt 9AM, train to BB. May stop at Heidelberg en route (there are luggage lockers in main station) for a few hours. Night BB
Sat: explore Baden Baden - hiking - Merkur funicular. Night BB
Sun: day trip to ?? (suggestions? May do Heidelberg here if we didn't do it Friday). Night BB.
Mon: train to Strasbourg, bike tour, possibly rent bikes and explore on our own. There is a work dinner that night in town. Night Strasbourg.
Tues: depart Strasbourg by train , 11AM flight out of Frankfurt (me) and off to work (him). There are two trains from Strasbourg to Frankfurt that get me in before 9AM... I'll shoot for the earliest one.

Mainly looking for suggestions for the second full day in Baden-Baden area? We enjoy using trains, wouldn't mind hopping on one for a day excursion (2 hours is prob max each way).

2 of my last train trips were delayed - one to ... Frankfurt by more than 2 hours, oth due to theft of copper cables.

Yes German trains are not always on time and things can happen anytime that are not previewed. Like in France my son's train was delayed two hours after someone was run over on tracks. IMO always be near departure city the night before with good links to airport or reasonable taxi ride.

Suit yourself, but that same-day train ride to the airport is a big mistake IMO and IME. I hope you can pay for another plane ride home if something goes wrong, and things do go wrong. Like thibaut, our last two train rides were problematic - one 2+ hours late and the other just canceled for "mechanical problems."

You're also playing with fire by taking a train that, assuming all goes well, gets you into Frankfurt "before 9 am". The train doesn't get you to the airport, Frankfurt is a huge and often chaotic airport, and you're supposed to be AT the airport 3 hours ahead of time for an international flight. In Frankfurt that often seems like barely enough time.

Aber viel Glück!

That's what travel insurance is for - i.e. when you've made all reasonable efforts and planning to make your flight on time but you missed it due to circumstances outside of your control, for example, significant train delays.

good luck documenting train delays for insurance! Like taxis getting stuck in traffic.

True, and even if you can document it, and are covered for it, the paperwork can be exhausting and your plans totally disrupted. Do you really think with travel insurance you'd get out of town the same day? Or even the next? Pffff....it's not that simple.

11AM flight out of Frankfurt (me) and off to work (him). There are two trains from Strasbourg to Frankfurt that get me in before 9AM

That's not enough time to arrive a new city, get from the train station to the airport, to check in 2-3 hours recommended for an international flight.

Frankfurt Main Airport Customer Reviews | SKYTRAX

Frankfurt used to be my favorite airport to travel through. I still allowed plenty of time to find my way around such a big airport, but it was extremely efficient and had good eating places, even a nice market. Now, however (just this Summer and Fall as a matter of fact), things seem to have greatly deteriorated. Just a heads up as to what to expect.

If you stick with the current plan, get that early train that arrives around 8:00. Don't risk the 9:00 arrival.

Arriving early, getting through security when it is moving quickly and having an extra long wait is not fun, but arriving to endure long security lines and getting to the gate fives minutes too late to board your flight is really not fun.

OK. Thank you. Point made - I will look into options for the last night in Frankfurt.

You have likely already done the research, but no harm in a repeat. You will want the airport train station, Frankfurt Flughafen, not the Frankfurt Hpt in the city center. Since it is South of the city and most major routes also connect there, no point going into the city and doubling back by U-bahn. One great thing about Frankfurt is how easy it is to take trains right from the airport, avoiding going into the city.

I was responding specifically and only to the point about the cost of another flight that you made. I thought it was obvious that travel insurance does not address getting you out of delays faster than without insurance. That's clearly a separate issue which only serves to try to confuse a simple point about the cost. Clearly if you absolutely must be somewhere at a certain time then you make your plans according to the risk and consequences of being late - no different from every day life. Also it should be obvious that, with or without travel insurance, you should make all reasonable efforts to make your connections and plan accordingly but people sometimes don't know what their worst case scenarios are and it's very difficult to plan for anything beyond a "usual" delay (whatever that is). You can't plan for everything in life so you do your best and have the safety net of insurance. Just like driving - you don't drive recklessly just because you have insurance. You take all reasonable precautions but you don't go around paranoid.

Often train delays are public info and anyone with a camera on their phone can document evidence of delays at the very least.